Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo, the president of Guinea-Bissau, has described the deadly fighting that broke out between two army factions late last week as an attempt at a coup.
Gunfire broke out on Thursday night close to the presidential palace in Bissau’s capital when members of the National Guard, who were allegedly releasing two government officials who had been imprisoned as part of a corruption investigation, battled with the presidential guard’s special forces.
According to AFP news agency, which cited army and intelligence sources, the National Guard stormed a police facility to free Treasury Secretary Antonio Monteiro and Finance Minister Souleiman Seidi, a member of the opposition party.
The two officials were brought in to be questioned on an alleged $10 million withdrawal from state accounts, and earlier on Thursday, they were placed under arrest at the request of state prosecutors. According to the site, Seidi and Monteiro were later released by the National Guard and placed under arrest once more.
The army of Guinea-Bissau reports that at least two persons were murdered in the violence that persisted on Friday.
The National Guard chief, Victor Tchongo, was accused by the army of orchestrating the event in a statement released on Friday. Tchongo was taken into custody earlier on Friday, but he has since been freed, a police source told Reuters.
After travelling to Dubai to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, Embalo returned to Bissau on Saturday. He informed reporters that he had been prevented from returning due to a “coup d’état” attempt.
“I guarantee that the occurrences on December 1, 2023, represent another attempted coup, and those accountable will face severe repercussions,” stated Embalo.
Since gaining its independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has experienced multiple coup attempts and a number of military takeovers, the most recent of which occurred in 2012.
Embalo, a former army commander, withstood a failed attempt to oust his administration in February of last year before winning election to a five-year term in December 2019. The attempted coup claimed the lives of at least six persons.
The president of the little over two million-person West African nation compared the events of the attempted coup last week to those of the previous year on Saturday.
“We saw the same situation on February 1, 2022. We still have to put a permanent stop to these unrest in Guinea-Bissau “said Embalo.
Why is the continent’s quest for independence still so challenging?
The West African regional bloc, or ECOWAS, has “strongly” denounced the disturbance in Bissau and any attempts to weaken the rule of law and constitutional order in the member nation.
In a statement released on Saturday, the group stated, “ECOWAS further calls for the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators of the incident, in accordance with the law.”
In recent years, there have been several military takeovers in West Africa, including one in Guinea, two in Burkina Faso, two in Mali, and the most recent one in Niger in July.
Authorities in Sierra Leone declared last week that a gang of police and military personnel had attacked jails and military installations many times in an effort to topple the civilian administration. At least 21 individuals were slain in the incident, according to Chernor Bah, the country’s minister of information for West Africa.
